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In an attempt to curb the practice of gender selection among parents-to-be, the Department of Health (DOH) is mulling imposing a ban on the use of a maternal serum screening test to identify whether a pregnant woman is at risk of having a baby with genetic disorders linked to gender.

The move follows the Bureau of Health Promotion’s decision to call in an obstetrician for questioning after he delivered more boys than girls.

The bureau’s actions drew strong opposition from the obstetrician and other medical staff who have also been questioned for having delivered unbalanced boy-girl ratios and the interview was later “postponed.”

The health department and the bureau, although denying that they had implied that the doctor had illicitly helped parents select the sex of their children, maintained that the gender imbalance among newborns is alarming and needs to be taken seriously, which may require the government to implement nationwide policies.

An interagency meeting convened in the wake of a recent debate on gender selection policy concluded that future monitoring of prenatal gender selection practices will emphasize management of...